the Reyes family, the chart-topping Gipsy Kings,
who come from the nearby city of Aries.
A few days later, in another Gypsy pub, the
gloomy Bar L'Ecluse (the Lock), on the side of
the highway near Aries, I find Jean Reyes, the
patriarch of the musical dynasty, his face now
lined with drink and age. He feeds a slug of
pastis through a gap in his gray beard, pats his
Chanel bandanna, and adjusts the sunglasses
that ride high on his wild spume of white
hair. "My family always used to make their
living with horses, buying, breeding, breaking,
betting," he remembers. "My father was very
strict-he wanted all of us to work-which is
very unusual for us Gypsies."
He signals for another drink, using his left
hand-his right hand, injured in a fall, is bound
in a polka-dot sling. "My best horse of all was
an Arabian stallion-I went to Algeria myself
to find him. I used to ride without saddles or
reins-just holding on to the mane. But life has
changed so. When I was young, I couldn't sleep
in a normal bed. Now most of my children have
nice houses. But me? I couldn't live in a house;
it would be like a jail for me."
THE EXPERIENCE of the Gypsies in France
and elsewhere in Western Europe has
diverged sharply from those in Eastern
Europe, where most Gypsies are to be found.
There they have just lived through a half cen
tury of communism, under which they were
pressured to settle and to assimilate. Very few of
them are now nomadic.
Slovakia is home to about half a million
Gypsies, in a total population of five million, one
of the highest ratios of Gypsies to gadje any
where. At current rates of population growth,
Gypsies will outnumber Slovaks by about 2060.
Most Gypsies here live next to old, established
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, APRIL 2001